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jamie-vanderan · 4 years

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Jamie Vanderan

IDENTITY

Name: Aoibhinn “Jamie” Vega Vanderan, born Aiden Vega Hearthwood

Gender: Female (trans), She/her

Age: 17 (sixth year)

Birthdate: Oct. 28th, 1972

Species: Human

Blood Status: Pure-blood

Alignement: CG

Ethnicity: Irish, British

Nationality: Irish

Myers-Biggs Personality: ENFP - The Campaigner

THE MAGE

1st Wand -> 11 3/4, Ebony Wood, Unicorn Hair

This jet-black wand wood has an impressive appearance and reputation, being highly suited to all manner of combative magic and to transfiguration. Ebony is happiest in the hand of those with the courage to be themselves. Frequently non-conformist, highly individual or comfortable with the status of outsider, ebony wand owners have been found both among the ranks of the Order of the Phoenix and among the Death Eaters. The ebony wand’s perfect match is one who will hold fast to his or her beliefs, no matter what the external pressure, and will not be swayed lightly from their purpose.

2nd wand -> 10 1/4, Blackthorn, Dragon Heartstring

Blackthorn, which is a very unusual wand wood, has the reputation of being best suited to a warrior. This does not necessarily mean that its owner practises the Dark Arts; one finds blackthorn wands among the Aurors as well as among the denizens of Azkaban and Death Eaters. It is a curious feature of the blackthorn bush, which sports wicked thorns, that it produces its sweetest berries after the hardest frosts, and the wands made from this wood appear to need to pass through danger or hardship with their owners to become truly bonded. Given this condition, the blackthorn wand will become as loyal and faithful a servant as one could wish.

Animagus: Red fox (vulpes vulpes)

Misc: Not a legilimens. Occlumens.

Boggart Form:

Voldemort. This form is more for what he represents as opposed to the man himself. He is the reason for the war that Jamie grew up in. His mere name caused terror to anyone who heard it. It reminds her of the rumors that her dear brother ran away to join his ranks, something she refuses to believe. Her mother fled with her and her twin after Voldemort’s fall, fearing the aftermath. The boggart taunts her, in a way, casting doubt on her belief in her brother and reminding her of her fear of losing him forever.

The Portrait Dragon. The dragon represents the first real challenge from the Cursed Vaults that she struggled to overcome, even with her twin and friends’ help. Her friends were directly hurt by her near-failure. It was also where Rakeprick, her mentor, betrayed her. It represents failure, recklessness, abandonment, and the dangers she brings to those close to her.

Riddikilus form: Voldemort > Explodes into confetti and giggle noises. Dragon > turned into a stuffed dragon plush that then starts acting like a puppy.

Amortentia: (what she smells) Some kind of wood (it’s pine but she doesn’t know that), honeysuckle, and a familiar perfume she can’t quite identify

Patronus: Fox

Patronus Memory: 1) When she was five and Jacob was running around with her on his shoulders while she directed him to chase imaginary dragons. 2) Her father teaching her to ballroom dance (standing on his feet and everything) after the hired instructor cancelled last minute. She was looking forward to it and was crushed, until he offered to fill in instead. 3) Lake-side impromptu theater with Rose, Penny, and Rowan. Penny said she had never seen a specific play that the others had, so the other three spent the next hour or so (very terribly) reenacting the play for her. None of them could remember half the lines collectively, so it quickly turned into an improv session based on what they remembered. Much laughter was had. 4) Talking with Talbott at night in the astronomy tower. Both were up and out of their dorms past curfew, neither able to sleep. They talked about anything and everything except why they couldn’t sleep.

Mirror of Erised: Her family, together and whole. Her twin standing on her right; Jacob on her left, looking how she remembered him; and her parents standing behind her.

Specialized/Favorite Spells:

Diffindo (signature)

Incendio (favored dueling)

Levitation Charm (from constant practice)

Depulso (signature/favored dueling)

Bluebell Flames (ooo, pretty)

APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Billie Eilish

Voice Claim: Linda Cardellini (as Wendy from Gravity Falls)

Height: 5′10″

Eye color: Blue

Hair color: Blue (naturally brown)

Skin tone: Medium cool

Body modifications: Magic-based partial transitional body transfiguration (MtF), magically changed hair blue

Scarring: A scar on her stomach from a gash caused by the spikes on the tail of the dragon in the portrait vault when she was swatted aside. She asked to keep the scar. She has a few small and faded scars that were not erased with magic, gained from an active childhood, but aren’t significant enough to mention.

Inventory (what’s something they value): Her wand. Leather bracelet bought from a muggle shop. Dragon tooth necklace bought from Diagon Alley after 3rd year. Self-inking quill with shiny blue ink (gift from Rowan). Prefect Badge.

ALLEGIANCES

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Affiliations/Organizations: Circle Khanna

Profession: She plans to become an auror after graduation.

HOGWARTS INFORMATIONS

Class Proficiencies

Astronomy: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

Charms: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

DADA: ★★★★★★★★★☆

O.W.L. Achieved: O

Herbology: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

History of Magic: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: A

Potions: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: O

Transfiguration: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

Flying: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Electives:

CoMC: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

Divination: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: O

Muggle Studies: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

Ancient Runes: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

O.W.L. Achieved: E

Quidditch: Joined team as beater in 6th year

Extra-curricular: Muggle music, dancing club

Favorite Professor: Flitwick. He’s highly skilled, engaging, patient, and fun.

Least Favorite Professor: Binns “Seriously, why does Dumbledore keep him?”

RELATIONSHIPS :

Sister: Rose Vanderan (fraternal twin)

The twins weren’t as close growing up as twins commonly are. From the age of five, both were raised and taught differently: Jamie (Aiden) was raised as a spare heir, as the second-born son, and Rose was raised as a proper young lady of the house. The separation continued once they reached school as both were in separate houses and made different friends (with the exception of Rowan and Ben who were shared with both). However, in their school years they were away from their mother, allowing more freedom from their “roles”. Since arriving at school, she and Rose dealt with all the expectations and concerns their brother left in his wake. Rumors, both good and bad, surrounded them and a lot of the weight was placed on their shoulders by Jacob’s larger shadow. Around their third year Rose became more involved with the search for the Vaults, and from that point the two became closer, and by their fifth year they were nearly inseparable.

Brother: Jacob Hearthwood

Born July 10th, 1963

Slytherin

Expelled Oct. 1980

Natural-born legilimens

Face Claim: Cody Christian

Since the beginning Jamie looked up to Jacob. He was cool, fun, brave, and strong, a great older brother. He was everything that she wanted to be. With a nine year age difference, she would always be a kid to him, but he always made sure to spend time with her during school breaks. She’d marvel at the stories Jacob told her of the adventures and mischief he’d get into at school, although he rarely spoke of the Cursed Vaults. Looking back she really doesn’t have any bad memories involving Jacob.

She, like her twin Rose, refused to believe the overheard whispers among the adults that Jacob had joined the Death Eaters: That he was young and impressionable, that he followed the wrong crowd and did a lot of questionable or illegal things that made him an interest for Voldemort’s efforts. Her brother would never. The rumor that he was dead she refused even harder; If he was a Death Eater, at least he was alive.

As she investigated what happened to Jacob in Hogwarts, she started to build a different image of her brother. Many people loved him, saying that he was a great student and a great friend. Others thought him a delinquent that brought nothing but trouble. It was the latter thought that surprised Jamie.

This Jacob was not the big brother she knew, or more accurately, the brother she remembered. Nine years is a long time, both as an age difference and a time to be separated. At first she believed that Jacob had changed, that the Cursed Vaults had really messed with his mind, made him mad like everyone claimed. But when she considered everything that she'd heard about her brother before he disappeared, both good and bad, she started to wonder if she ever really knew him to begin with. This was first evident when she hesitated to approach him in the Portrait Vault. Was this really the Jacob she remembered?

In mirrored contrast, her hesitation was also due to how different she was from what he remembered. He remembered Aiden, his younger brother. Rose tried to help explain, and Jacob understood the general idea from Rose’s memories due to their legilimens connection over the years. While he seemed to have accepted, Jamie didn’t have the chance to really say more--or anything she wanted to say the past nine years--before he ran off after Rakepick.

She was a stranger to him, just as he was to her.

Mother: Vassendra “Vassie” Vanderan

Born August 24th, 1943

Pure-blood.

Slytherin.

Lady of the Manor.

Work for the Dept. of Magical Games & Sports (Quidditch League Headquarters).

Face Claim: Charlize Theron

Vassie was often cautious and controlling, and at times overbearing. She had high expectations for all of her children, especially so for Jamie--who was Aiden then--as the only remaining male heir after Jacob’s disappearance. Jamie was relatively close with her mother before attending Hogwarts, but after Jacob’s disappearance their relationship was strained as she drew into herself more and more.

As the dangers of the Cursed Vaults grew with each year and the twins’ insistence in being at the center of it, Vassie threatened to pull them both out of Hogwarts. She very nearly had after their fifth year and the events of the Buried Vaults, but the twins managed to convince her that they would stay away from the Vaults, stating that they had learned their lesson the hard way. But a month into their sixth year, after they both turned 17, they broke their promise and threw themselves back into the search for the final vault. Jamie refused to give up on Jacob or just forget what Rakepick did. This is what finally estranged their relationship.

Jamie felt that her mother, like many of the other adults, had given up on Jacob and written him off as dead. She understood that her mother mourned Jacob’s absence as she had, as they all do, but while her mother was trying to move on, Jamie refused to let him go. Perhaps part of her, the still childlike and naive part, thought that if she could find Jacob and bring him back, that everything would go back to the way it was before.

Jamie’s estrangement from her mother was largely due to Jamie’s stubborn pursuit of the Vaults, but it began before she first arrived at Hogwarts, with her mother’s dismissive refusal to accept that her youngest “son” is actually one of her daughters. It wasn’t until just before Jamie’s second year at Hogwarts that her mother relented enough to allow a dorm change, and another year until she legally changed Jamie’s name from Aiden to Aoibhinn.

Father: Damian Hearthwood

Born July 28th, 1929

Pure-blood.

Gryffindor.

A businessman and threat analyst.

Natural-born legilimens

Face/Voice Claim: Jeremy Irons

Hearthwood was a fastidious and daring man, a strict but rewarding father, and a devoted husband. He cared greatly for his family and did what was necessary to provide for and protect his family. Like Vassie, Damian held high expectations for his children, and made efforts to ensure that they were raised to meet them.

Where Jamie had a closer and stronger relationship with her mother, she had a more distant but emotionally complicated relationship with her father. Her memories of him are mostly vague and sort of dull mixed with a desire for recognition and pride. She has several happy memories with her father that she treasures, but she also has memories of his disapproval and disappointment that she can’t let go. She sought his approval, to have him speak of her with the same pride as he had with Jacob.

When he was arrested in 1981, shortly before Voldemort’s fall, it came as a shock to her. Her father was a businessman, but he never spoke of specifics and her mother insisted it all be kept away from the twins. The adults would whisper, as they had when Jacob disappeared, but they were far more quiet and careful when it came to Mr. Hearthwood, as if they were afraid. Jamie, however, was angry with her father for being sent to Azkaban and leaving behind the backlash and danger great enough to make them leave the country. Her mother kept much of the details about Mr. Hearthwood’s arrest from the twins, shielding them the same way she did with anything involving what Mr. Hearthwood did.

Her emotions toward him are complicated.

Love interest: Talbott Winger

Best Friends: Charlie Weasley, Ben Copper (until his distance in 6th year)

Rival: Merula Snyde, Penny Haywood (in Potions)

Enemy: Rakeprick, R., the trick step in the staircase behind the tapestry on the fourth floor corridor

Dormmate: Barnaby Lee, Linden Flint (background angry blond Slytherin boy). From 2nd year on: Merula Snyde, Ismelda Murk, and Liz Tuttle.

Pets: Waffles Cooper (ginger tabby cat), Whiskerfitz (Jacob’s old owl)

Closest MC Friends: Penny Haywood, Ben Copper, Rowan Khanna, Andre Egwu

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

Vassendra met Damian when she was young and she was instantly swooned by his charm. He had money, charisma, influence, and good looks--well approved by her family as a satisfactory suitor. Within a year of their marriage, Jacob was born on July 10th, 1963. Aiden Vega Hearthwood was born shortly after her twin, Róisín, on October 28th, 1972. Jamie spent the majority of her childhood in the Hearthwood family estate, a manor built by her father, in Gloucestershire, England. In 1980, early into Jacob’s final year at Hogwarts, he was expelled and declared missing shortly after. In 1981, Mr. Hearthwood was arrested for selling contraband (illegally imported magical items) to Death Eaters, and was imprisoned in Azkaban. After Voldemort’s downfall a month later, Vassie took the twins and moved to Ireland to live with her father’s family, thinking distance would protect them.

PERSONALITY

Positive Traits: Strong-willed, charismatic, cunning, resourceful, adaptive communicator, empathic, confident

Neutral Traits: Observant, insightful, ambitious

Negative Traits: Jealous, manipulative, over-thinks when it comes to others’ reactions, lack of focus, meddlesome, scheming

MISC

Able to see thestrals since fourth year, after witnessing a student affected by the Sleeping Curse die from an unknown poison/venom in the hospital wing.

Learning to play guitar, is okay at it

Whiskerfitz is a small, crazy looking, and easily ruffled owl that used to be Jacob’s. He was an excitable and charming owl, but since his owner's disappearance he’s become neurotic and scared of people. It took the better part of her third year to get Whiskerfitz to trust her enough to approach him. Now he adores Jamie.

She managed to pass History of Magic thanks solely to Rowan and Rose’s help.

Inspired by a text glitch in-game, Jamie had trouble remembering whether Ben’s last name was “Copper” or “Cooper��. To fix this, she named her cat Cooper, so that Ben’s name is the other one. He probably doesn’t know this.

Notes:

The nickname “Jamie” was born of necessity from so many people mispronouncing Aoibhinn (ee-vahn). When asked, she’d tell people it was short for Jasmine, instead of James, because it’s feminine and fits with her twin’s name, Rose.

Her alignment started chaotic neutral, but it shifted as her goals became less selfish and more bigger picture, as it were. The Cursed Vaults affected more than just her and her siblings, and she started fighting for more than just her own personal reasons.

Jacob is nine years older than Jamie and her twin. He went missing shortly into his seventh year, three days before their ninth birthday.

The dragon tooth necklace was a gift reward from her mother for her high exam marks at the end of her third year.

Yes, that is a fourteen year age difference between the mother and father.

Used @hogwartsmysterystory‘s HPHM MC template.

#jamie vanderan #hphm mc #vanderan twins #jacob's sibling #hphm mc profilfe #mr hearthwood #talbott winger #hphm mc profile #ben copper #hphm ben copper #rose vanderan #madam rakepick #charlie weasley

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theartistgirl · 4 years

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Warning: Spoiler!

Okay, so just got back from seeing Cats and it...wasn’t...that...bad...?

Spoilers below. This will be long.

When you go to see this, you can’t really compare it to the musical because the story is actually quiet different. It is truly a new take on the idea. I know some people are going to go in wanting to hate it but I liked it well enough. I will actually be seeing this again with Knitwitty and Windpurr on Sunday and may add more thoughts later but lets start with two things right off the bat: 1) Munkustrap is almost perfect, I mean, I could find no issue with this performance of my favorite silver tabby. Bravo Robbie Fairchild! 2) Female Deuteronomy was fantastic and not weird. Yays!

Okay, the real big issue I had: Tugger. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few times he was in character. There is this part during Bustopher Jones where he pours champagne into Bustopher’s mouth, then when he’s done Bustopher says ‘Thanks Tugger’ and yeah, that felt right. But the real issue,they did not give him sex appeal and his singing left something to be desired. It felt more like he had ADHD, which would work if he was a kitten. But as the Character he is supposed to be...not so much. His part of the Ball was odd and kinda forced. Worst of all, there was little to no interaction between Tugger and Mistoffelees. Zilch, zip, zero. He didn’t sing the song, he wasn’t even around till the end. No friendship or anything hinted at.

Leading into that: Mistoffelees. I really enjoyed this portrayal. He was adorkable and shy, really a sweetheart that I wanted to adopt. However he did lack the cheekiness that the musical and the DVD version had as well as very low in self confidence. The only thing that really bothered me was, well, he didn’t dance. There was no conjuring turn, no amazing ballet moves, non of that at all short of Ball moment. I could go on, but I want to wait till I re-watch it to make my final judgement.

Gus the Theater Cat: Perfect. Wonderful. Loved it. No complaints with Ian McKellen.

Also, Growltiger was unexpected and I was happy to see him.

Now, for a performance I dreaded but hoped wouldn’t ruin the film: Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots. Oh, boy...to much to list so I’ll stick to the big things. First off, many of her moments (as always) felt forced and out of place. Yes, the crazy cat lady moment was funny and her interaction with Bustopher wasn’t bad. Second, well, she didn’t feel like Jenny. At all. While it didn’t ruin the film I felt dissatisfied with what should have been a large role. She also didn’t tap dance.

Skimbleshanks: Wonderful performance, had the energy and fun as always. They gave him the tap dancing parts and it worked really well.

Old Deuteronomy: A pleasant surprise. I usually find myself disappointed when they switch genders on such an important character but this worked very well and Judi Dench made it a treat to see.

Macavity: Loved the crazy eyes, they really stood out and grabbed your attention. I really enjoyed his story in this retelling. At least most of the time. Later on he became kinda cheesy and not a threatening. Biggest issue was THERE WAS NO FIGHT SCENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The fight scene was the big heart pounding epic score portion of Act ll and THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT!!!!!!!!!

Also, Bombalurina worked for Macavity? As did Mungojerrie and Rumpleeazer? To be honest, the hardest thing was trying to figure out who all the non song cats were. Its harder without the wigs, they all blend together.

Grizabella, as always was a beautiful sad part that chocked me up.

And as I stated in the beginning of the post, Munkustrap was the best part of this movie and I loved every moment he was on screen. He was the one I was most concerned about and I was glad that I didn’t have to worry at all!

Oh yeah, Victoria. Not a bad portrayal of the character. She even did some ballet which made me smile. And I enjoyed the cute little thing she and Misto had. All in all, I felt like they turned her a tiny bit into a Mary Sue but that could also be because they gave her all of Jemima’s singing parts.

.....was Jemima even in the movie? Actually, was Jellylorum or Demeter there either? Pouncival? Tumblebrutus? I might have seen Alonzo maybe. Cassandra? Etcetera?

So hard to tell who is who with the sleek fur design. -_-:

I could go on but really the thing that stood out more then anything was the lack of dancing. I mean, there was dancing, but it wasn’t the jazz/ballet that made the Jellicles the Jellicles. There was some break dancing that was fine but a lot of it was more interpretive dance and kinda...boring. Seeing the cast dance has always got me energized and wanting to dance along before (bad dancing but still) however, that didn’t happen with this film.

The fiance’ was disappointed that they didn’t have the Rumpus Cat story. HE love’s the Peke’s and the Pollicles.

#Cats 2019 #cats the musical #munkustrap #mr mistoffelees #tugger #jennyanydots #gus #skimbleshanks #old deuteronomy

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thewellzine · 4 years

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High Fidelity, Racial Ambiguity, and the Myth of Universality in Film and Television

By Amber Delgado

I rarely binge watch television shows, I try my hardest to avoid it. I go to the movie theater pretty regularly—the ease of entering a specific viewing space to consume a story where I know I’ll receive a beginning, middle, and end typically within a two- and half-hour time span (to include trailers) is efficient for my busy millennial lifestyle. With the advancement of streaming services within the past decade, television series are getting better, more “diverse,” more abundant, and simultaneously longer in episode length and shorter in number of episodes within a series. I avoid binge watching for two reasons, the first being due to the capitalist society I’ve been brought up in; it makes me feel like a lazy, worthless blob of a human being to have sat or laid still for hours on end looking at a screen. How dare I spend that much time being unproductive? The second is that these shows, the good ones at least, are so damn tempting to binge they practically require it. The next episode button counting down in the right-hand corner basically taunting you as the music of the quick credits plays in the background. A black screen with white text pops up and you’re stuck with that immediacy to decide: should I continue being a worthless blob or finally go to the gym? Because I can at times have an addictive personality, I always go in for the kill when I occasionally find a show that I enjoy.

I hadn’t heard much about the new Hulu adaptation of High Fidelity starring Zoe Kravitz until about a week ago, through Instagram. I believe someone I follow shared in their Instagram story a promotional photo that Zoe Kravitz took for the show. Due to my years long crush on Zoe, I looked further into what exactly this show was about. I had never heard or seen the original film High Fidelity, adapted from the novel by Nick Hornby. So I was interested to check it out, and on Saturday night after returning from the gym and starting some laundry, I decided to attempt to watch only a couple of episodes.

In the opening scene of the first episode Zoe Kravit’s’ character Rob, is breaking the fourth wall in tears about the breakup with her boyfriend Mac. It really draws you in. (I personally haven’t seen much Zoe Kravitz has acted in. I’m aware of her most recent role in Big Little Lies, but was never too interested in giving that a watch; take that with a grain of salt because again, I’m not watching much television generally compared to the average person). The acting in this scene, and also how stunning Kravitz is, instantly pulls you into the series. Rob replaces the main character played by John Cusack in the original film adaptation. While I was watching the show, I found myself Googling more about both the novel and the film, and scanning reviews for more context regarding the show.

Little to no surprise, I read multiple headlines claiming how groundbreaking it is to have Zoe Kravitz replacing a white male lead. What was surprising for me however, is how in the ten episodes, the character Rob—played by Kravitz, a Black woman—rarely acknowledges her identity and rarely has dialogue with other characters in the show. I enjoyed High Fidelity for its incredible costume design; lighthearted moments; the comedic champion who carries the show, breakthrough actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph (who has one of my favorite character introductions in television history);and its nostalgic and fun soundtrack. Where the series falls flat for me is unfortunately through the writing of the main character, Rob. I want so badly to like her and root for her; I see a lot myself in how she shows up (or doesn’t) in relationships. I enjoy newer series giving complexity to female leads in terms of romantic relationships. Being shown the representation that women don’t always have their shit together, we can be confused, we can seek multiple partners, we can hurt people and don’t always conform to the predetermined, hetero-patriarchal assignment of care-giving nurturers, we can crave sexual relationships and pleasure without seeking long term commitments.

This review is me wading through something I’ve constantly been thinking about. A couple of months ago, while having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a cis-het white filmmaker, we discussed him writing in characters that are people of color within his scripts. And got into disagreement about representational writing and universality. He was arguing that there are certain stories and emotions that transcend race and identity. And also, that not all television and film consisting of Black and Brown characters have to directly be attached to their identity, they can just be “everyday people with everyday stories doing ordinary things.” This is what the writing of High Fidelity feels like to me. I suspect a predominately white writers’ room casting a Black woman lead character in replace of this story about a white man who owns a used record store.

My discomfort around Rob’s character are in the writing; I’m not arguing for a monolithic representation of Blackness and Black womanhood or a script that consistently states that Kravitz is a Black woman. I don’t think that Rob isn’t written “Black” enough for me to enjoy. Moreover, I feel when Black characters in television and film are written through the lens of universality, so much context of living life as a Black person is lost. That type of representation is one we cannot afford to lay to rest when Black people can never “put down” their Blackness and while white supremacy remains entrenched within the foundation this country was built upon. White people need to understand that Blackness can never be detached from our everyday lives, both white people who are consuming media and culture and those creating it who want to have a fun diversity party.

The myth of universality serves white supremacy, white people having the historical advantage of defining rules and building institutions. I can’t help but associate a yearning for universality with objectivity. The argument of make this “neutral enough so everyone can enjoy it” undeniably has historically served and prioritized whiteness. This always brings me back to the amazing Toni Morrison quote which I feel directly addresses the myth of universality:

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”

Rob lives in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and a majority of people she dates and hangs out with are white people, with the exception of her brother and her co-worker and friend, Cherise, who she seems to have a complicated relationship with. I think this show is able to literally write off Rob’s Blackness, due to Zoe Kravitz being a lighter skinned, almost racially ambiguous Black person…which has long been in discussion within how Black people are represented in media. Major production houses and casting companies are most comfortable seeking Black actors who confirm the loose curl pattern, light skin preference. Even Zendaya has acknowledged her awareness of her career being due to how she looks, and how she looks being preferred by the industry. What does it say that in the year 2020 we have the nerve to celebrate representation when so many of the Black actors getting work have all these same physical attributes? Where is the diversity, really?

Lastly, like in the film and the book, Rob goes through her top five worst breakups of all time, and seeks to contact them as a means for understanding why her relationships are failing. As she goes through this list, four out of five partners are white people. I myself, being biracial and growing up middle class, understand firsthand how their specific experiences can lead to a Black person ending up in predominately white spaces. However, these contexts are never presented for Rob in the story of her character; the series treats, as natural, that a Black woman just happens to have always had a bunch of white people in her life…and that needs no explanation as to how? This is particularly hard to take in throughout the series as she consistently disrespects, undermines, and ignores her only Black woman friend and employee, Cherise. At times, outside of her Black most recent ex-boyfriend, Mac, I questioned if Rob really cared to have any Black people in her life, which wouldn’t be difficult to do living in New York City. Why were the writers content with making those decisions? It was enough to have a Black woman lead and one Black supporting character—the diversity box is checked and then the rest of this cast can be mostly white.

Rob feels so flat to me; there was potential in this remake but it feels the writers were striving for the clout of having a Black female lead without actually writing a Black female lead. I’ve also had a similar feeling about the 2019 film Waves, starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. and directed and written by a white man. When watching the trailer for Waves, I felt like I had no idea what it was about, and after a Google search and seeing that the film was written and directed by a white man with a predominately Black cast, I instantly lost interest. I did follow through on seeing it out of curiosity, and for me it was my least favorite film of 2019.

At this point, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, especially if you’re a white person, “So what, white people can’t write in characters they don’t have a lived experience of? Isn’t that art? Can’t I be free to make whatever I want?” White people don’t need my approval to create, or much less do anything. White people have been doing whatever they want to since the beginning of this land mass (see colonialism). What I am saying through this review, is that if you expect a hoorah for your forced universalism via pre-approved Black and Brown bodies that you call diversity, we’re gonna continue to see right through that. So hire some Black and Brown writers, there’s plenty out there.

#amber delgado

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thetourguidebarbie · 6 years

Note

yes! i'm gonna request it!!!! :P

The post in question can be found here. It was originally requested by @dontbeallupinmyfriesdawg so I hope you like it! Unbeta’d, first draft, etc.

“Ouch! Fuck, sweetheart. I’m not a knife block.”

“It’s not a knife. It’s a pin. Stop being a baby,” Caroline said, putting a hand on his shoulder to make sure he stayed still and taking another pin from between her teeth, sliding it into the tunic as he watched, his face pulled into a disapproving scowl.

“That can’t be sanitary.”

“It’s not like I had ebola. My cold’s been gone for like, three days now.”

“A cold could inhibit my ability to project.”

Caroline held Klaus’s eyes with a glare as she inserted a pin a bit more harshly than necessary, nicking him in the side, raising an eyebrow when he flinched. “Whoops.”

“Careful love, I could report you to the Dean for assault,” he grumbled, though his tone didn’t have any bite to it, and Caroline rolled her eyes so hard it hurt.

“Yeah, and get laughed out of the office. Stop slouching.”

He straightened his spine and she walked behind him, adjusting the tunic to make sure it sat correctly and tried not to show how lowkey annoyed that her cold was gone. Sure, the sniffling had been irritating, but it was now a lot harder to ignore how good he smelled.

“I could ask Damon to replace you with a different designer, I doubt he’d see a problem with it.”

It was an empty threat and they both knew it. Damon might hate her for dumb reasons, but not only was she the only remotely competent design major willing to do costumes for the play, but she was also the swing for half the female roles. She’d effectively made herself indispensable. Even if that wasn’t the case, she knew Klaus wouldn’t trust anyone else to make his costumes.

“I’m terrified. Truly,” she said, dropping to her knees behind him to check the hem of the tunic before leaning back slightly. “Take off your pants so that I can do the hem really quick.”

“You just want me to undress for you.”

“I don’t have time for your half-ass flirting, Klaus.”

“Half-assed?” he asked, drawing out the word in an irritatingly good imitation of an American accent. “I’m wounded, love.”

“Not my problem. I still have a bajillion things to do, including finishing up your armor for the last scene. It’s almost done and I’m hoping to finish it by tonight, but I’m still behind on everything else. I don’t think I’ll have the time for more than one fitting for everyone before dress rehearsals.”

Klaus hummed in a way that could pass for sympathetic and let his trousers fall, stepping out of them and searching her face. “How long have you been here today?”

“Since like, eight, maybe?”

“Caroline, it’s nearly seven o’clock.”

“I know. I do have a phone,” she said grumpily, pressing on before he could keep talking, anxious to get him out so that she could finish. “Can you come back around eleven? I should be done by then and I can get you fitted. The armor is the hardest part, so—“

“I’ll be here, sweetheart,” he said, cutting off her babbling.

“Good.”

She grabbed the pants he kicked off and took a fraction of a second to admire his ass (she was only human) before standing up, heading to the sewing machine and plopping down in the chair. “Take off the tunic and hang it up by the door. Please don’t screw up the pins again, okay?”

She heard the rustle of fabric as he slid the tunic off and did her best to stay focused on the sewing machine. She’d caught a glance of his abs more than a few times in the past few years and it was best to not fall down the “what would they feel like under my tongue” rabbit hole, at least not in front of him.

From the first day they’d met he’d shot her lust-filled glances that made her cheeks heat, and she hadn’t been shy about returning them for the first few days. She had always tried her best not to let things get too complicated with anyone in the fine arts department, though. The industry was small and she couldn’t afford to make enemies this early. She’d turned him down regretfully when he asked her out the first week, and he seemed to take it as a challenge. He hadn’t made another overt move, but he did somehow manage to worm his way into her circle of acquaintances enough that he’d grown on her. They were solidly frenemies now, though she could privately admit that they were more on the friends end of the scale than enemies at this point.

He still sent her affectionate glances when he thought she wasn’t looking that made her heart skip a beat, and she’d given up on resisting the urge to do the same. Enzo had even let slip that Klaus might have gotten wasted at a cast party and implied he still had feelings for her, and she’d only recently grown brave enough to recognize that she might like him too. A lot.

Possibly too much.

As graduation drew closer, he’d started finding more reasons to linger near her, and she didn’t really mind…until now.

Tech week was serious business, and she couldn’t afford distractions, not if she was going to finish up the costumes. She tried her best to concentrate on that as the hours ticked by, to not stew on how once tech week was over she’d have to come up with a different, even dumber excuse for not giving into Klaus.

Or you could just give him a chance, a tiny, unwelcome part of her prodded. Maybe he wouldn’t be a vindictive, petty, life-ruining asshole if it didn’t work out.

“Shut up,” she mumbled to the (supposedly) empty room, flinching when Klaus spoke from behind her, sounding amused.

“Do I really walk that loudly?”

“I was just talking to myself,” she said, turning around to see Klaus with a tray containing two coffees and a bag that looked suspiciously like take-out from her favorite hole-in-the-wall pasta place two blocks from campus. “Oh my god, is that for me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the best, Klaus. Thank you so much! I seriously feel like I’m about to fall over.”

“Perhaps you should sleep,” he suggested mildly, setting down the tray and bag.

“I don’t have time—“

“Well, eat at least, then,” he said, gesturing to the food. “I had a feeling you’d be working yourself to death.”

“No eating near costumes or props,” Caroline said automatically, though she felt her mouth practically watering at the prospect of carbonara, and he rolled his eyes.

“Jeremy isn’t around to murder you for it and I’m certainly not going to tell. Or you could eat in the other room.”

“That’s true,” she said, glancing at the half-done gown for Camille spread across the table and making a mental list of things she still had to do before deciding she could make an exception just this once. “Okay. I’ll try to be quick. Let’s get you into the armor first though. You can keep your shirt on, but I need you to take your jeans off and put on the pants from your costume.”

His hands were already going for his belt when she’d finished, and she cleared her throat, looking away. It was harder to find the will to feign disinterest on this amount of sleep, and she found herself second-guessing her life choices. She waved him over to the table where she was storing the armor and grabbed the first piece.

She’d done her best to make the armor set fast and easy to put on. He had more than enough time to change, but it was always good to leave cushion for sudden emergencies. “I’ll be there to help you, but see how there’s a front half and a back half to each leg and to the top?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so the front half has straps that go around and buckle, like this.”

She demonstrated, lining up the front of one of the legs with his and reaching through his legs to wrap the strip of sturdy cloth around his thigh and buckle it securely before doing the same with his calf and switching to the other leg.

He was watching her intently as she adjusted the pieces, sliding the backs into place so that they fastened to the front part of the costume, and kept his eyes on her face when she stood. “What?” she asked, frowning and taking the front of the chest armor from the table.

“Nothing, love.”

“Put your arms out.”

He did, and she slid the armor up to rest against his chest, her palms lingering against his shoulders for a second too long, and she felt her cheeks heat as her eyes flicked up to meet his. She quickly darted behind him to buckle it into place and adding the back piece before putting the shoulderpads on. “Good?” she asked, wincing at how high-pitched her voice had gone.

“Yes, love.”

“Great! Just walk around the theater to get used to it and make sure you can move in it,” she ordered, already reaching for the food and coffee, determined to get away from him and have a breather to regain her footing. Hopefully the food would help. “And seriously, thank you. You’re a literal lifesaver.”

His lips twitched. “Glad to be of service. Yours is the one on the left with all the sharpie marks for your various customizations.”

“Thanks,” she said, checking it and feeling an unwelcome warmth burst in her chest that he’d remembered every single one.

She moved out of the room to the nearby green room, giving herself permission to check twitter as she was eating and draining the coffee. It had been about a half an hour by the time she returned to the sewing room to find Klaus in the armor looking a bit peeved.

“You okay?”

“I need you to take it off. I can’t reach the fastenings in the back.”

Her lips twitched, and her sleep-deprived brain pushed words out of her mouth before she could stop them. “What kind of bad pick-up line was that?”

“A true one,” he shot back, clearly amused at the horrified look on her face once she processed what she said. “Though as I’m sure you’re aware, Caroline, I’d be perfectly happy to let you undress me anytime.”

The statement hung in the air between them, and Caroline felt like the short distance between them was charged with energy, her skin prickling at the way he was looking at her, the longing and all-consuming need in his expression making her pulse race.

It was the boldest he’d been since that first week when he’d asked her out, and in her heart of hearts she knew he wouldn’t wait forever, that time was running out, that she had to make a decision. It was so unfair that it was harder to resist him without her usual impeccable impulse control, but she knew that if she was honest with herself, her control around him had been waning ever since the day they met.

“I know,” she said, biting her lip at the flash of irritability in his eyes, how clearly frustrated he was with her brush-off.

“Caroline—“

“And I wouldn’t either,” she said in a rush, anxious to get the words out. “Mind, I mean. Undressing you.”

He stared at her, clearly not having expected that particular plot twist, and she pressed her lips together trying not to giggle. He looked so stunned at her admission, that she’d actually acknowledged the heat between them instead of brushing it off the way she usually did. She wondered whether he’d thought it was hopeless. Maybe she’d been better at being subtle than she’d thought.

Or maybe he’d been over her for months and was just in the habit of the over-the-top flirting and she’d completely misread and said the wrong thing like she always did and—

Her mind went blank as Klaus took a few determined strides, cupping her cheeks and bending to press his lips against hers.

The kiss was slow, drugging, like he was taking his time, memorizing the feel of her lips against his. Her hands naturally fell on the cool metal covering his chest, her knees slightly week. She felt his calloused palms warm against her cheeks, and his thumb brushed along her dimple when she gave him a bright smile as he pulled away. She liked the way the blue of his eyes had darkened, the slight part of his swollen lips, and she wanted to see it again.

“I want to touch you,” she said, slightly embarrassed by how breathy her voice was, and it was his turn to smirk. “Turn around. Let’s get you out of this thing.”

He obeyed, and she made quick work of the back, pulling off the shoulder pads and unhooking it easily, leaning forward to nip and kiss his neck as she unfastened the buckles holding the front in place. Klaus shrugged it off, tossing it on the table, and she couldn’t help but feel satisfied at the mark she’d made on his collarbone and the heaviness of his breathing.

She dropped to her knees next, easily detaching and unbuckling the leg guards. “Take off the pants too.”

He obeyed, letting them drop to the floor as she scooted around in front of him, grinning when she saw that he was hard. She flicked her eyes up, holding his gaze and letting her tongue dart across her lips as she reached to palm him, but he caught her wrist. “Not here, sweetheart.”

“What?” she asked, letting him tug her to her feet and inhaling sharply when he spun her so that her back rested against his chest, his hard cock pressing against her ass. His fingers brushed just under the waistband of her jeans, tugging lightly at the front of her thong to give her friction that made her knees buckle, his other hand warm against her hip as he steadied her.

“Let me take you back to my flat,” he murmured between kisses to her neck, his fingers moving slightly to rub her clit through the cotton. “Bed’s much more comfortable than a nap on the couch, which is what I suspect you were planning on.”

He suspected right, but she didn’t want to admit it.

She really wanted to, the exhilaration of finally having given in, of letting the tension snap too delicious to ignore. Unfortunately, when she caught sight of the gown on the table, responsibility called her name. “I have work to do.”

“And you’ll do it better once you get some sleep.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, the sarcasm heavy in her voice, and she was surprised when she heard his breath catch, his hands tightening briefly on her waist. “What?” she asked, though she had a feeling that she had a pretty good idea of what.

He spun her around to face him, and she grabbed his biceps for balance, absently noting the taught muscles underneath her fingertips. Her lips parted at the want in his eyes. It set her skin on fire, her entire body sensitive and aching for him.

She could feel the heat of his breath on her lips, and his voice was low as he spoke, the tone of want making her nipples tighten. “Fuck, Caroline…”

“It could be fun,” she said, her voice husky, fingers brushing against his skin. “I like role-play.”

“Later,” he said after a moment of consideration. “I have so many plans for you, Caroline, so many ways I imagined taking you for the first time. Though I must admit that I’ve had more than a few fantasies of role-play involving those words coming out of your mouth, I want you first.”

“Tell me more. What you think about, I mean,” she breathed, her nails digging into his back, and she heard him chuckle. “Hey. You’re not the only one with fantasies, and I always had a feeling dirty talk would be on your list of life skills.”

“It would be my pleasure,” he said, pulling back to press his forehead against hers. “Once you come home with me.”

“Deal. I just need to finish—“

“Now, Caroline.”

His voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but the tone of it sent shivers down her spine, made her breath catch, her walls tightening unsatisfyingly around air.

“Okay,” she breathed.

Maybe the gowns could wait, after all.

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #klaroline drabble #klaroline fanfiction #mydrabbles #otp: annoyingly perfect

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surveys-at-your-service · 6 years

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Survey #137

“if i could kill you, i would, but it’s frowned upon in all 50 states.”

Who was the last person that borrowed money from you?  Mom. Think of the person you fell hardest for. How many people has he/she been in love with, besides you?  One. Do you have any 70s, 80s or 90s music on your iPod?  Plenty. If you had 5 minutes to talk with any politician, who would it be? I don't have the desire to talk to any, really. What would you ask them? N/A You’re stranded alongside the road. Who do you call first? Mom. Name 3 things from your childhood that you still have today: Lots of video games, love for animals, and tons of stuffed animals. Ever yell at someone for not washing their hands after using the bathroom? Not "yell," no. When is the last time you danced? ahhhHHhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHH one night when Sara was here and we were outside listening to music. Someone breaks into your house while you are in bed. What do you do? Probably grab my phone, jump out my window, try to get to a neighbor, and call 911. How did you first learn your “limit” when drinking? I don't know what that is for me. Who is the one person you DON’T want to come to your wedding? I was gonna say Jason but tbh the asshole in me says I'd love him to see how happy I am without him lmao. I don't really know one specific person I wouldn't want to come... Maybe a massively homophobic friend or family member who can't keep their mouth shut, considering it's probably gonna be a same-sex wedding? Have you ever been to an ocean and, if so, which one? The Atlantic. What’s your favorite sea creature? Hmmm. Seahorses or whales, maybe? Which of your exes has your parents disliked? I barely consider Juan an ex, but Mom didn't like him. She liked Jason until the breakup and she saw how much he'd changed. What’re your uncles’ names? I only know Rob and Billy off the top of my head... but those actually might be the only two? I know Dad doesn't have a brother, and I think those are Mom's only bros. What’s your favorite forest animal? Deer. If you met a genie, what would be your three wishes? World peace, end disease, end to poverty/homelessness. Have you ever been pressured to get married? No. Do you agree with traditional male and female roles? *maniacal laughter* Were you raised by someone other than your parents? No. Who’s your favorite wizard? Uhhhh idk. Has your mother ever been in jail? No. What were you teased for when you were a kid? I wasn't really teased for it, but I remember a lot of kids thinking I in general was weird, like my interests and stuff. My AvPD ass can legit still remember some "she's strange" scenarios from fucking kindergarten. Have you ever been hunting? No. What’s your favorite story from Greek mythology? Uhhhh. I don't remember. If you were turned into a god or goddess, what would you be the god or goddess of? Peace. Have you taken shrooms or acid? No. Have you ever been to Times Square to watch the ball drop for the New Year? No. Have you ever made a time capsule? No. What is one good thing you do for your health? I've been doing an intermittent fast. Drinking mostly water. Do you know any illegal immigrants? I knew one, but he got deported. Do you have any cavities? I currently have one, but we can't afford to fill it atm. It's not major, thankfully. What is the most you have ever weighed? Like 270 and I'm super proud to say I've lost a shitload. Have you ever received anesthesia or morphine? Both. The one time I received morphine, it didn't do shit. If you had to choose which video game to be in, which would it be? World of Warcraft's universe to be a beast mastery hunter. Heaveeeen. Between the two, would you rather live in a place where it’s only night or where it’s only day? Only day. It's natural to humans. Plus it being dark constantly would affect my mood. In your opinion, does the world make people cruel or do people make the world cruel? Both. Out of fire, earth, water, wind, light, and dark, which element appeals the most to you? Dark. Do you usually have to make yourself get over someone or does it just happen naturally? It's both, but mostly it's a natural process. But you have to want it. Would you rather spend your evening at the circus, at the movie theater, or at a drama play? Movie theater. What music band/singer has inspired you the most to follow your dreams and be yourself? Why? Otep. Her lyrics are passionate as fuck and deeply encourage people to stand up for what they believe in and never fear standing out. What is your sexuality? If you aren’t straight, when did you realize it? Was it hard? I "knew" I was bi in the 8th grade, but because of religious beliefs I had back then, I forced myself into believing it was my anxiety making me worry I was. I had a crisis over it for like a week, but finally made myself accept I was straight. Didn't question it again until last year, when it was honestly a very easy thing to accept. Looking back through middle, high school, and years beyond, I had definitely been sexually attracted to women. Do you ever wear lipstick? What color(s) do you prefer? Veeeery rarely, and black. Which word(s) do you generally use to describe someone attractive? (e.g. “fit”, “sexy”) I usually say "hot" in regards to strangers, but "beautiful" or "gorgeous" is more common when I'm speaking of females. Would you consider yourself an adventurous person? Eh... not really. Have you ever been afraid of being underwater? No. Would you ever scuba dive in shark-infested waters if you had the chance? No. Have you ever slept on the floor with someone you like? Yeah. Have you ever read any of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books? No. Have you ever sneaked someone over to your house? No. How many tattoos would you get? A LOT. My right arm's gonna be covered, left one too probably, back, hands, ribs, hip, maybe neck... I want so many okay. Who do you go to for advice the most? Mom or Sara. Is there a person you talk to everyday with? Sara and Mom. Does one of your parents ever complain to you about the other parent? HA. Mom's good at that. When you move out your house (or if you already have moved out) do you plan on still visiting your parents' house? Definitely. Do you usually take home leftovers if you eat out in a restaurant? No. I pretty much always finish. Do you wish on 11:11? No. Do you think you could ever have an abortion if you unexpectedly turned up pregnant right this second? I honestly don't know. If my life was at risk, yes, but even if it wasn't, I truly do believe pregnancy could be traumatizing for me. I'd have to be in this situation to really know. If you were far from home and needed to sleep for the night, would you choose to rent a crappy motel room for $60 or sleep in your car for free? Sleep in the car. If you could see any musician live, front row, who would you choose? OZZY. What's the next movie you want to see in theaters? The new Jurassic World movie. Has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes? Yeah. Think back to the last person you held hands with, would you kiss them? I have and I will a billion times more. Have you ever fainted? If so, when was the last time? If not, have you ever came close to? Yes, and like... 2012/2013? Did you ever breathe in helium and talk funny afterwards? Maybe I have? Ever meet and talk to someone from an online dating site? No. Did you decorate your house for Halloween? If so, how many decorations? Did you go all out or just put up a few things? We didn't last year and we probably won't this year. We don't have many decorations. When I've got my own place? Oh, HALLOWEENTOWN. Which type of Halloween costume do you prefer, sexy ones or scary ones? Or maybe funny ones? Well-executed scary yet beautiful ones. Do you like cranberry sauce? NONONONONONONONONO. Do you have the right time set on your microwave? Yes. Do you like Slim Jim’s? OH BOY- Are there any plants in your house? No.

#survey #quiz #questions

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fuckyeahevanrwood · 6 years

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Evan Rachel Wood Channeled Her Own History of Abuse For the Queer Thriller Allure

Evan Rachel Wood's latest film, Allure, in theaters now, sees the actress painted in a light very unlike anything we've seen from her before. As a solitary housemaid, Laura, she enters into a relationship with, and subsequently kidnaps, her 16-year-old client. A survivor of abuse herself, Laura is a deeply complex woman with a history of severe mental instability who can be decidedly categorized as an antagonistic and deeply unlikable character, yet Wood manages to find a humanity and intense vulnerability in her performance.

The film comes at a highly interesting moment in Hollywood, as stories of abuse within the industry take center stage. To tell a story of abuse from the point of view of the abuser at such a time was a radical move, made more interesting by the choice of casting a woman to play this part, given that it had been initially written for a man. The result is a frightening film that captures the deeply woven mental intricacies and contradictions victims of abuse so often face, and the vicious cycle they often find themselves wrapped up in.

As an outspoken survivor of abuse in her own life, Evan Rachel Wood found herself uniquely qualified to portray the nuance of such a frightening relationship onscreen. But that's not to say the role was a walk in the park. The Emmy-nominated actress explained to us how difficult it was to revisit the anger she'd worked so diligently to overcome in bringing authenticity to this part. That the core relationship of the movie is homosexual is refreshingly inconsequential, and Wood talked to us about her delight that telling queer stories doesn't have to be for queerness' sake anymore.

It's not the only highly demanding role Wood has taken on this year. As the star returns to the wild odyssey of Westworld for a second season, she explained why the new challenges have made season one seem like a breeze. She spills about the crazy shooting schedule, the ambitious time frame they worked in, and the blood, the shotguns, and the horseback riding that so often permeated her workday.

Besides Westworld, we got Wood's thoughts on her new movie in the context of #TimesUp, finding a way to keep such an emotionally charged set feeling safe and consensual, and how she was able to pull off embodying a sociopathic abusive kidnapper with astounding believability.

OUT: What were your first thoughts on the script when you read it? I’m imagining you had a strong reaction, in one way or another.

Evan Rachel Wood: Well, it’s funny, I had just done season one of Westworld and was exhausted. Doing Westworld is one of the most physically and emotionally draining things anyone can ever do. That goes for whether you’re the camera operator or hair and makeup. It’s just a really brutal shoot. It’s amazing. I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t want to do another movie. I was like, 'I’m done for the year, I can’t, I have to recuperate.' Then I came across this script, and the writing was really good. It struck me at first because ever since I heard Jodie Foster say that she reads scripts for men and women and, if she really likes them, she just asks if they can gender swap it, I was like, 'Man, I hope I can get to a place in my career where that’s possible,' because that’s a genius idea.

And that seems like a no-brainer now that the film is finished.

Luckily, Jason and Carlos, the directors and writers, had already come to that conclusion about this one. They had tried to make it with a man, and they were like, 'Ah, there’s something about this that is just not popping.' And someone said, 'What if he’s a woman?' And they had the awareness to go, 'Wow, that makes the story—that gives us so much more to play with.' To do it well with two women and have one of them be the abuser was like, 'Whoa, okay, I haven’t seen this story, and I wanna know how this goes and this happens and what the psychology behind this is.' I was really attracted to that because I believe in equal opportunity for women in film—that goes not just for the good guys but for villainous characters, as well. So this was like, 'Ok, I have the opportunity to do that and to play this sort of Taxi Driver-ish character as a woman and see what that’s about.'

It's a really intensely emotionally complex role.

I really appreciated the complexity, because obviously, I have experience in this area, and this was the first time I really read something that captured the psychology of an abusive relationship and the abusive side as well. It’s something that, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s really hard to judge. So when people ask, 'Why didn’t you just leave? Why did you come back?'

If you have been manipulated in that way through your love for somebody, you’re really vulnerable. I thought it was important to show how it’s done, how gaslighting is done, and how emotional blackmail is done. How after a while you can start feeling sorry for your abuser and you don’t know how to leave, so you just try to take care of them and try to stop whatever fiasco is about to happen. Also, the effect of abuse is something I can relate to [with] PTSD. There were things about the character that I knew I could give some understanding to—the torment of herself and feeling like a prisoner of her own trauma. I think you can see her dissociation in the film. Sometimes that’s a trauma response. I think if you look really hard, you can see the moments where she’s not there. She’s physically there, but there’s nothing behind her eyes.

Definitely.

And that’s what abuse looks like. It’s somebody that’s walking around like a normal—relatively normal—person, but if you look a little deeper, they’re not there. They’re a shell of a person. They’ve gone to another realm because they’ve had to. Especially if they’ve been abused themselves. It paints a different picture—a more honest picture—because it’s complicated.

You've struggled with abuse in the past and, as you said, that makes you uniquely qualified for this role. How did you feel when the #MeToo movement was beginning and these stories were coming to light?

Oh man. I wrote this essay about it for Nylon called “What a Time to be Alive,” and it was what I learned in the year since Trump had been elected. But it wasn't even about Trump [or] about how horrible he is—it was about other things. It’s been a real bittersweet moment. It’s been retraumatizing and when it was all happening, we were also working on Westworld and the themes in that are all about overcoming abuse and oppression and finding your power. Season two is really about the reckoning.

Jeez, I can’t wait! Wow.

Knowing that while it was going on was a real 'life imitating art' point in my life. Luckily, I’ve been doing work every single day in my life to become a whole person and I've read every self-help book I could. I tried to learn about abuse and learn about trauma and the more I can learn about it, the more I can understand it. The more I can let it go because otherwise it’s just crazy, and you don’t know what you’re feeling and no one really tells you. I’ve felt strong enough to do these roles because I knew it and understood it, but I also knew I could go there and be able to get myself back out.

It must have been such a powerful feeling to be in a place to do this role.

Yeah, and when the #MeToo movement happened, people were like, 'How you doin’ man?' I was like, 'You know what? I’m proud of myself because I’m very shaky and I’m very triggered, but I’m not hopeless and I’m not in despair.' That was new for me. It was new to be like, 'You know what? I’m feeling these things, but it doesn’t feel as dark or as scary or like I’m free falling.' That was empowering and to know that you’re not the only one just made me sob.

This is a female-led story, and it’s directed by men, but it really is a story that takes the female perspective. It’s so interesting because she’s not a very… She’s a bad person, really, at least to an extent.

She’s broken.

She’s broken. And I wonder how the LGBTQ angle fit into this?

When you think about Laura, you know that she’s been struggling with shame and identity and repression her entire life because she had been dealing with that sort of thing that she didn’t really know how to deal with. Trying to stifle that or whatever, but I also appreciated her being... whatever she is. I don’t even know if she’s gay, you know? That was never the culprit. It was never, 'Oh, well she’s abused and now she’s gay,' or 'oh, she’s gay, now she’s abusing.' It was just two women.

Yeah, it’s past that.

Yeah, we’re past that. Exactly. That’s not what it’s about. And let’s shatter those conceptions about that being the issue. That’s not the fucking issue.

Right!

If anything, the issue is these backward ideas.

That led to this, yeah.

Yeah, it was just rebranding it in a new way. And it’s funny when people interview me about it and they hardly bring it up. That’s amazing. That people can watch a movie that is still a lesbian romance with a much older woman and much younger girl, and they are focused on your movie. That means we did our job right. That's a good sign.

It’s also a nice indicator of how much progress has been made in regards to gay and queer storylines when that doesn’t have to be the focus anymore. It's just accepted as something that can be on screen, not for its own sake.

Exactly.

When you were filming, what the energy was like on set? Especially with this really heavy story and with the consent aspect with your co-star, Sarah Stone?

She was nineteen when we did the movie, and that's one of the reasons why Julia was so perfect. We looked at a lot of girls because it had to be right and they had to have a certain sense of emotional maturity to act very vulnerable. It had to be believable that I could overpower this person and be physically threatening to them.

She was amazing.

She checks all the boxes and she was the best actress. When she came into the reading, I was like, 'Duh. It’s Julia. She’s the only one that can do this.' She’s an adult legally so it makes our job easier because we’re not worried that we’re traumatizing this poor person. She’s a real actress and we had mutual respect. I’m so not like this character at all and I was mainly concerned that I wasn’t going to be believable as this scary person or that I was going to be too timid with her and be worried. I was probably overly cautious and was always asking if she was okay because I also remember what it’s like being that age and being on a set. Even when you're nineteen, you’re still vulnerable. I was constantly like, 'Ok, I’m gonna do this now, are you cool with that?' or 'Ok now, you just let me know, speak up.' I think after a while, she was like, '... I’m fine!'

It also helps that we had Sara [Mishara] behind the camera. She’s a genius. I’m obsessed with her. It was wonderful having that extra pair of eyes behind the lens—we knew that we were going to be taking care of. She wasn’t going to be doing anything that would be gratuitous or that was going to exploit us in any way. Any time we veered into that accidentally, we shut it down so fast. We were allowed to look at playback and be like, 'We can’t do this. This doesn’t send a message we want to send, so let’s just stop.' We were careful.

It's good to hear that you had women in so many aspects of the filmmaking process and that it was done with a lot of careful thought. What was the most difficult aspect of filming this?

Anger.

Anger?

Yeah, because I feel like I've worked so hard to not be angry, now it's the hardest emotion to conjure up. You’ve got to go back into the depths of yourself and be like, 'Ok, what really made me mad?' I don’t like it. My least favorite part of my job is whenever I have to be scary or mad or hurt somebody. Who likes doing that? Some people are like 'Oh, it’s so much fun to play the villain,' and I’m like, 'No it’s not! It’s awful!' It was not fun and the first time we did the scene where I came in and I threw her onto the ground, I started to cry.

The first time I did it and I was yelling at her, I was fighting back the tears of regret and fear for her and myself. It was really weird to be on the other side, but it also made me feel like I could bring influence to it. I knew I could sit down with Julia and be like, 'You know, when someone does this to you, you’re too shocked to move.' I feel like I could put my input into it and say, 'When someone does that to you, you are so frozen because you cannot believe it’s happening.' Most people think you would fight back. Well, I mean, some people would, sure, but for the most part, you’re on the floor thinking, 'What is going on?' It’s hard to process this quickly enough to react.

In regards to Westworld, you touched on how it’s been the most challenging thing you’ve ever done and I know you can’t share any spoilers, but how has season two has felt compared to season one in terms of the filming process.

Season one was a walk in the park comparatively. Season two is highly ambitious in terms of the themes and the amount of time for filming. It was like filming ten movies in six months. The schedule was grueling, to say the least. We were also filming out of order this time so a lot of the time, I’d show up and be like, 'What episode is this? What happened right before this? What’s gonna happen right after?' If you tried to keep track you would drive yourself crazy. We did our best. You’re also on horseback and in the cold and you’re risking your life. It’s the Deadliest Catch factor because you do it while riding full speed with no hands and shooting rifles. That was a daily occurrence and you do it like improv almost. You’re given this scene and then you do it.

Wow, oh my god.

But I also think that there is a part of [the producrers] that like us to be completely disarmed—just like the guests in the park. I’m talking about stripping us down to our most primal selves. I have a weird feeling that that’s also why they keep us in the dark. So that we’re our most primal, vulnerable, honest selves and don’t overthink things. I've noticed on the show that, because it’s so complicated and because we care so much about it, it’s really easy to go off and do too much with it. It’s probably better that they give us a little bit by bit.

So you don’t get the whole script at once?

No, we get scripts as they come—sometimes the day before we’re about to shoot. I’ve worked on some scenes from episodes I hadn’t even read. I’ll walk in, and I’m looking around going, 'Ok, I don’t know what is going on. I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t know what that is, or what I’m doing or why I’m covered in blood.' I’d ask, 'Why am I covered in blood?' And they’d say, 'You’ve been through some stuff.' It is quite a new way of working that I don’t think anyone is used to, and at times it’s all crazy, but I think we all secretly love it.

#evan rachel wood #Interviews #out magazine #allure #interview 2018 #westworld #season 2

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sebastiansource · 7 years

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I’m Dying Up Here: TV Review

[Contain spoilers of the first episode so please beware!]

Showtime's look at the Los Angeles comedy scene in the 1970s has a strong ensemble (featuring Melissa Leo, Ari Graynor and Jake Lacy), lots of potential and at least one awful early episode.

After a spring that brought us the low-key charm of HBO's Crashing, the no-charm blandness of TV Land's Nobodies and Amazon's lively and clever pilot for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Showtime is hoping the public's appetite for behind-the-scenes explorations of the world of comedy is big enough for the angsty hour-long perspective of the network's I'm Dying Up Here.

I'm Dying Up Here is based loosely on William Knoedelseder's non-fiction book about the '70s Los Angeles stand-up scene. Rather than following Knoedelseder name-dropping approach to future superstars like Jay Leno and Robin Williams, the series — developed by David Flebotte (Masters of Sex) with an off-camera Jim Carrey among the executive producers — builds a fictionalized ensemble of aspiring jokesters. Their dreams of the spotlight create a well-acted sprawl that soars when it mines meaning from the boozy, smoke-filled desperation of its milieu and bombs when it tries to shoehorn themes in artificially.

Goldie (Melissa Leo) runs the hottest comedy club in Hollywood circa 1973. Half caring den mother and half vindictive microphone-withholding autocrat, she boasts that unpaid gigs on her stage are the most direct route to Johnny Carson (Dylan Baker). Proving her right is Clay (Sebastian Stan), who gets his big Tonight Show appearance in the pilot as friends watch in pleasure and unrestrained envy. Among those waiting for their own break are increasingly bitter Bill (Andrew Santino), Vietnam vet Ralph (Erik Griffin), hot-headed Edgar (Al Madrigal) and Cassie (Ari Graynor), a Southern transplant still looking for her voice. Newcomers include RJ Cyler's Adam and, fresh off the bus from Boston to see their pal Clay, Eddie (Michael Angarano) and Ron (Clark Duke).

The admirably deep talent pool on I'm Dying Up Here also features W. Earl Brown as a rival club owner, Alfred Molina as an ineffective manager, Robert Forster and Cathy Moriarty as one comic's disapproving parents, and Richard Kind as a network executive. There's so much cast coming-and-going that Jake Lacy, a cast regular as a comic returning from the Playboy Circuit, doesn't arrive until the fifth episode.

The show's cast indeed is so big that one marvels not at individual performances so much as the meshing and chemistry of the whole. Graynor is probably the standout as Cassie begins to realize the limitations in how her colleagues and the customers view female comics. Stephen Guarino, as family man Sully, adds sweetness to the conflict between wild-and-crazy comedy and the need to put food on the table. Santino, back in my good graces after his role in the trainwreck that was ABC's Mixology, brings a welcome dash of grumpy misanthropy. And Angarano and Duke, often off in their own wacky fish-out-of-water storylines, bring a more relaxed humor to the mix, especially in an early visit to Let's Make a Deal. I also particularly appreciated how Leo and Griffin, both working from initially outsized personae, find ways to start broad and occasionally cartoonish and then dig deeper.

The I'm Dying Up Here pilot was directed by Jonathan Levine (Snatched) and is a fantasia of over-saturated '70s excess, with enough gauze and smog infusing every frame to nearly obscure the bellbottoms, feathered hair and afros. It's stylish, vibrant and proudly showcases influences like Boogie Nights and The King of Comedy (or Goodfellas, since it's gunning to be Scorsese-esque probably more than Altman-esque). It's also one of those pilots that establishes a template none of the increasingly flat subsequent episodes can match. Even if I'm Dying Up Here suffers from steadily declining flair, the pilot hooks viewers on the gap between the world of glitzy indulgence these characters are aspiring to and the grimy world of open mics, unpaid quickie sets and dead-end second jobs they're living in.

The thing I'm Dying Up Here does best is actually the hardest thing for shows like this to achieve: It takes a foreign situation that audiences might not inherently empathize with and at least makes us believe that the stakes are real for these characters. It sets up the triumph of getting summoned to Carson's couch, the stomach-growling allure of a complimentary performer buffet, the crushing disappointment of finding your name removed from a setlist and the claustrophobia of taking up residence on the floor of a closet to save money. Once it does that, I'm Dying Up Here is able to explore the shifting face of comedy, smartly illustrating the transition from Yiddish theater to the Borscht Belt to the ways in which Richard Pryor, a character in one episode, rewrote the rules. And the routines themselves are very much in keeping with the transitional comic voice of the moment, just hacky enough to be believable and just funny enough to be watchable. An environment in which people speak without a filter is also an organic way to explore struggles for female and minority comics that are still part of the conversation today, as well as the limitations of comedy in a time in which "political correctness" didn't exist.

When I'm Dying Up Here uses comedy as a vehicle to be about something more, it succeeds, but when it forces matters, it fails ugly. The fourth episode is a clumsy and frequently hypocritical effort to glom onto the Women's Rights Movement, utilizing Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs' Battle of the Sexes tennis match, cornball musical cues like "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" from Annie Get Your Gun and a crazy, sexually perverse groupie storyline that made me yearn for the comparative subtlety of Showtime's Roadies. [The episode also wedges in a poorly motivated Vietnam PTSD plot.] When you get this clunky with your take on feminism, you force me to search credits to observe that none of the first six episodes sent to critics were directed by women and only two, the fourth not included, were written by women. The bad taste from this episode lingers a bit, even later, when Cassie's enthusiasm for a potential CBS women-in comedy-showcase delves into similar material much more deftly.

The smoother storylines of the earlier episodes and an ensemble with no sore thumb pieces kept me watching through the rough sections and left me with hope that even though TV's need for another show about comedians is nonexistent, I'm Dying Up Here might continue with an approach that's different enough and expansive enough to be worthwhile.

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#i'm dying up here #sebastian stan #spoiler #news

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justanothercinemaniac · 7 years

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #127 - Chicago

Spoilers below.

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) This film holds a lot of personal significance to me. I first saw it when I was 13 in one of the hardest months of my life. I was sick with pneumonia (diagnosed that day) and my great grandmother had just died, so the whole family was over because the funeral was that week. It was late and someone wanted to put in a movie so my dad pulls out Chicago. My mother was a little bit strangely strict about what PG-13 movies I could and could not see, usually forbidding more sexual stuff than anything else. So this was the most sexual film I had seen at the time and I had felt because of that, and the fact I was watching it with all the adults of my family, that I had been promoted to the adult table in some senses. I was really captivated by the music, the story, the moral ambiguity, it was just so different from anything else I’ve seen. I would not be Just Another Cinemaniac without Chicago. In some ways its as important to my film fan identity as Back to the Future.

2) The film opens with an extreme close up on Roxie’s (Renée Zellweger’s) eye, giving us our first inkling on how this is a musical in Roxie’s mind. But more on that later.

3) Note that we never see Velma Kelly’s (Catherine Zeta Jones’) face until she’s on stage giving a performance. This creates the feeling that Velma is ALWAYS putting on a performance.

4) Catherine Zeta Jones as Velma Kelly.

This film is pretty much perfectly cast, I think. 4 of its actors were nominated for Oscars, with another being nominated for a Golden Globe. Zeta Jones actually won her first (and to date only) Oscar for her role in this film, and for good reason to. She IS Velma Kelly. Zeta Jones is totally lost in the role, being able present all of Velma’s different qualities. Her showmanship, her rare vulnerability, her killer instinct, and it all just WORKS. You never EVER feel like you’re watching an actress. Zeta Jones IS Velma Kelly and as the first character we get a nice long look at, it is a great performance to start the film off with.

5) Hey, it’s Dominic West!

6) Renée Zellweger as Roxie Hart.

Roxie is really the lead of this film, the character who we follow along and see the world through. The writing is really interesting. It would have been easy to start Roxie off as some innocent girl who made a mistake and goes on this big journey, but Roxie - despite whatever facade she puts up - is hardly some innocent girl. She readily and passionately has an affair even though her husband is a pretty nice guy (and not a “nice guy” where the guy acts nice but is really a jerk, but is actually pretty kind), murderers her lover just for being a jerk (there are better reasons to murderer someone), all while putting up this act like she did nothing wrong and is the victim. And I honestly think she believes it.

Renée Zellweger captures all these conflicting parts of Roxie’s character with true mastery. She also is able to handle Roxie’s transformation into a more cutthroat and determined creature with the same expertise. Like with Zeta Jones, you never feel like you’re watching Zellweger just giving a performance. She is - for all intents and purposes - Roxie. Originally Charlize Theron was cast in the part but after a change in directors there was a change in casting, and Zellweger had to learn signing and dancing for the film. It paid off wonderfully, as she was nominated for an Oscar for what is possibly her best role ever.

7) John C. Reilly as Amos.

John C. Reilly was also nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this film, and it is clear why. Amos is the only honestly good character in the film, and even then he is not without his flaws. He is not above losing his temper or being able to say when enough is enough when it comes to Roxie (you know, the woman who cheats on him, tries to have him take the fall for murder, and manipulates him in court just to get off). But - because this is Chicago - he’s the only main(ish) character to come out the other side being totally and utterly screwed over. There are some nice layers to Amos (mainly the loss of temper as mentioned above) and Reilly is just totally sincere in the part. It’s no wonder he was nominated for an Oscar.

8) This film sets itself apart from other movie musicals through the idea that the musical is all in Roxie’s head.

This creates a plausible explanation for why character’s burst into song and dance, allows the film to utilize some unique editing and art direction, and finally gives us a nice peek into Roxie’s head. This element allows us to see just how passionate Roxie is not only for the desire to perform but also the desire for fame. It also lets us know how she sees OTHER characters in the film (namely Billy Flynn, but more on that later). I think it is this key element that set the film up for such critical and artistic success, leading to its best picture win at the Oscars.

9) Danny Elfman provides a few nice instrumental pieces of score for the film which feel totally period Chicago. When you are adapting a popular musical such as Chicago adding extra music could be a challenge, but Elfman’s occasional score blends perfectly with the rest of the film.

10) Queen Latifah as Mama.

Latifah rounds out the quartet of Academy Award nominated performances with her portrayal as Matron Mama Morton. I think it’s Latifah’s best performance. She is able to portray Mama as cooperative and a bit soft spoken, but still someone who deals with no bullshit from her inmates. She is as manipulative as any other character in this film, if not as in big a way. You often hear her tell Roxie and Velma EXACTLY what they want to hear knowing that it will lead to a big pay day for her. It is a crafty role which Latifah plays well, and her introductory song “When You’re Good to Mama” shows off not only this characterization but Roxie’s perception of her quite well. It also allows for Latifah to show off her impressive singing chops.

11) The Cell Block Tango.

Where do I even begin with this number? It is by far the most iconic and best part of the entire film. The filmmakers are able to use the idea of “the musical in Roxie’s mind” to create a visually unique and compelling number which is edited together seamlessly with the “real world” of the Cook County jail Roxie finds herself in. Each of the “murderess mistresses” is given enough time to create a unique character and create a sense of the world Roxie (and the audience) finds herself in at this time. I particularly find the use of ribbons to illustrate blood/murder wildly effective, noting that Hunyak’s ribbon (the girl who constantly claims she is not guilty) is white whereas the others are red. This suggest that she is - in fact - innocent.

It is also worth noting that while the first story starts off very much “I’m guilty, here’s what happened”, that by the time we get to the inmate who claims her husband “ran into her knife” ten times the stories have become more and more claiming of legal innocence. This is a trend which continues through Velma’s story, where she claims she blacked out after seeing her husband & sister having sex and came to with blood on her hands. We as the audience have actually seen NOTHING which contradicts this story, further creating a nice sense of showmanship within the film.

12) Okay, I am all for good female friendships on film and television, but I would be lying if I said the catty relationship between Velma & Roxie was not entertaining. I think this is a byproduct from good writing (with what we know about these characters, how ELSE could their relationship go?) and the wildly captivating chemistry between Zeta Jones and Zellweger. Their relationship is one of the key sources of conflict throughout the film and with those two actresses it just WORKS.

13) Richard Gere as Billy Flynn.

The number in Roxie’s head which introduces us to Flynn - “All I Care About” - is a pitch perfect example of expectations vs. reality. After what she’s heard about Billy (which isn’t much mind you), Roxie expects him to be this honest to goodness lawyer who only wants to save women from dying in by the noose in Chicago. What we get however is the craftiest, most manipulative skeeze ball in the film. So why is he so damn likable? Who is he comparable to the roguish Han Solo? Why do we root for him? I think that is all in Gere’s performance. It would be easily to play him as a disgusting slime ball but there is a charisma that Gere brings which I think elevates the character and the film. Originally offered to Hugh Jackman & John Travolta at different parts, Gere’s chemistry with the rest of the cast is great and although the film didn’t land him an Oscar nomination he did receive a Golden Globe for his work.

14) I think it’s worth noting that Roxie does not take too long to adapt to prison. Again evidence that she’s not as innocent as she wants people to think.

15) “We Both Reached For The Gun”

I can never tell if this or “Razzle Dazzle” is my favorite number in the film, but I think for a visual standpoint it HAS to be this. This is once again where the conceit of “the musical in Roxie’s head” benefits the film GREATLY. The imagery of Roxie being a dummy operated by Billy to sell her story not reflects on their relationship in an incredibly clear way (as well as how Billy is literally using people) but also is just visually fascinating. Zellweger is a lot of fun during the number, and if you ever want to know why this film won the Oscar for best editing the year it was nominated just watch this scene.

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16) The song “Roxie” when Roxie is at the top of her game is a great character study. It goes even deeper into Roxie’s desire for fame and admiration, a key quality in her character that drives pretty much all her actions throughout the film. It features gorgeous cinematography with its use of mirrors and presents us with Roxie’s ideal self. This ideal self is not a good person (not necessarily), but someone who is adored by her audience. If that doesn’t speak to who Roxie is as a character I don’t know what does.

17) A film is told in cuts, as in cutting from one moment to the next in as clean and clear a way as possible.

Velma [after Mama suggests she kisses Roxie’s ass to maintain some position]: “Over my dead body.”

[We cut to the mess hall, where Velma is seen smiling at Roxie]

Velma: “Mind if I join you?”

18) “I Can’t Do It Alone”

Up until this point we have not seen Velma truly vulnerable. We have peeked more into who Roxie is as a character than who Velma is. That all changes with this number, which shows us that Velma is just as desperate for the spotlight as Roxie is. She NEEDS to stay relevant, she NEEDS the fame and the admiration, and only when it was too late did she realize that the murder of her sister took away one of the key things that made her so desirable to the world in the first place. This song is a fun number that adds nice depth to Zeta Jones’ character and shows off just how talented she can be with Velma’s vulnerability.

19) My heart broke a little when I saw Velma’s face after Roxie’s rejection of her.

And in that moment and that moment alone, I think I shipped the two of them together.

20) Lucy Liu’s glorified cameo as Kitty, the newest jazz killer in Chicago and the one who threatens to take away Roxie’s fame, is a perfect example of how easily Roxie can fall. But here’s the thing, Roxie is smarter than she appears. And more manipulative. It is her greatest strength that people underestimate her, so when she “faints” and mentions “the baby” everyone - from Velma to Billy - are all surprised by her.

21) I was a naive 13 year old. I didn’t understand that the doctor who said he’d testify that Roxie was pregnant had very clearly slept with her (hence Billy’s remark about his fly being open).

22) “Mister Cellophane”

Somehow this song not only shows us how ROXIE perceives her estranged husband as being someone who’s not worth caring about, but also makes Amos into a sympathetic character. He is not particularly whiny about the fact that he’s oft forgotten, he’s just a little sad about it. Reilly’s performance in the song is filled with soft sorrow and vulnerability we don’t always get to see from the actor, an honesty which carries the entire song on its back. It is a truly worthy number to be included with the rest of the film, with its Chaplin like art style and Reilly’s vocals, and I’m glad it made the cut.

23) In a lot of ways Chicago is a noir comedy musical. I say this for two reasons: Amos being kinda screwed over at the end, and the fact that Hunyak - the only innocent girl in the jail - is the only who is hanged. This also reminds Roxie of the fact that she IS on trial for murder and of the fatal consequences she could face.

24) “Razzle Dazzle”

If “We Both Reached for the Gun” is my favorite number in the film from a stylistic standpoint, then “Razzle Dazzle” is probably my favorite from a thematic one. Gere expresses Flynn’s belief that the courts are just a circus, simply entertainment to be manipulated, in a way which is just that: entertaining. I am always totally taken in by the song through its themes of craftiness, playful melody, and fun visuals. It is just a wonderful number which I love watching again and again.

25) If “Razzle Dazzle” doesn’t tell you how Billy sees the court system than this line will:

Hell, the non-musical court room scenes are in a lot of ways more dramatic than the musical ones.

26) This film had a song which was shot but not included in the final cut, one sung between Mama and Velma called “Class”. Still found on the movie’s soundtrack, “Class” had the pair discuss how the world seems to have gone to shit and how no one has any class. It was cut both for pacing issues and - largely - because it did not fit the theme of “the musical in Roxie’s head”. Roxie was at the court house and these two started singing after hearing about what was going on over the radio. It is a wonderful song but I think the film works better without it featured.

27) It took absolutely no time at all for Roxie not to matter. The press didn’t even want her picture after the verdict was read. Another killer, another star.

28) The final number of the film is a dual thing. The first of which is Roxie singing the song “Nowadays” on her own at an audition. The song is sad, somber, and lacks umph. This causes the directors to pass on Roxie. But when Velma and Kelly work together? When they’re able to work with their heat and chemistry and put on a duet of “Nowadays”? The umph is back and it is a wonderful number to end the film on!

I’m obviously biased through my own personal experience with the film, but I think Chicago is quite possibly the best movie musical of the 21st century (yes, even better than Les Miserables). The acting is incredible across the board, with Catherine Zeta Jones and Renée Zellweger being the obvious standouts. The concept of “the musical in Roxie’s head” allows for a musical which is unique and supports a wonderful art style. The songs are fun, the pacing and editing are great, and it’s a technical spectacle in its subtletly. Just a wonderfully entertaining film I think everyone should watch.

#Chicago #Chicago Movie #Roxie Hart #Velma Kelly #Rob Marshall #Catherine Zeta Jones #Renée Zellweger #Richard Gere #John C Reilly #Queen Latifah #Dominic West #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Movie #Film #GIF

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oscopelabs · 7 years

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“Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai?”: Bollywood's Scandalous Question, and The Hardest-Working Scene in Movies by Genevieve Valentine

In a nightclub with the mood lighting of a surgical theater, a village belle is crying out for a husband. Her friend Champa encourages and chastises her by turns; her male audience is invited to be the bells on her anklets. (She promises, with a flare of derision, that serving her will make him a king.) Her costume, the color of a three-alarm fire, sparkles as she holds center screen. The song and camerawork builds to a frenzy as if unable to contain her energy; the dance floor’s nearly chaos by the time she ducks out—she alone has been holding the last eight minutes together. And the hardened criminal in the audience follows, determined not to let her get away.

Subhash Ghai’s 1993 blockbuster Khalnayak is a “masala film,” mingling genre elements with Shakespearean glee and a healthy sense of the surreal. By turns it’s a crime story, a separated-in-youth drama, a Gothic romance with a troubled antihero, a family tragedy, a Western with a good sheriff fighting for the rule of law, and a melodrama in which every revelation’s accompanied by thunder and several close-ups in quick succession. (There’s also a bumbling police officer, in case you felt something was lacking.) It was a box-office smash. But the reason it’s a legend is “Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai?”—“What's Behind That Blouse?”— an iconic number that’s one of the hardest-working scenes in cinema.

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See, Ganga (Madhuri Dixit) isn’t really a dancer for hire. She’s a cop gone undercover to snag criminal mastermind Ballu (Sanjay Dutt), who’s recently escaped from prison and humiliated her boyfriend, policeman Ram (Jackie Shroff). Ballu, undercover to avoid detection, is trying to avoid trouble on the way to Singapore...but of course, everything changes after Ganga.

Though the scene shows its age—the self-conscious black-bar blocking, the less-than-precise background dancers—it’s an impressive achievement. Firstly, it’s a starmaker: the screen presence of Madhuri Dixit seems hard to overstate. By 1993 she was already a marquee name, and she would dominate Bollywood box office for a decade after, both as a vivid actress and as a dancer whose quality of movement was without peer. But if you’d never seen a frame of Bollywood you’d still recognize her mountain-climb in this number—playing the cop who disdains Ballu playing the dancer trying to court him, performing by turns for the room and to the camera, conveying flirty sexuality without tipping into self-parody, and all on the move for kinetic camera shots ten to fifteen seconds at a time. Dixit’s effortless magnetism holds it fast; the camera loves what it loves.

But this is more than just a career-making dance break; “Choli Ke Peeche” is the film’s cinematic and thematic centerpiece. Khalnayak is about performativeness. Ballu performs villainy (sometimes literally) in the hopes it will fulfill him; Ram vocally asserts the role of virtuous cop to define himself against those he prosecutes. As Ballu performs good deeds—saving a village from thugs, ditching his bad-guy cape for sublimely 1993 blazers—his conscience grows back by degrees. As Ganga performs a moral compass for Ballu, her heart begins to soften. And at intervals, crowds deliver praise or censure, reminding us that all the world’s a stage. (It’s in the smallest details: While on the run, Ballu’s ready to kill a constable until it turns out he’s an extra in the movie shooting down the street.)

And nowhere in cinema is the fourth wall more permeable than a musical number. Bollywood’s turned them into an art. Playback singers are well-known (they even have their own awards categories), a layer of meta in every performance. Diegetic dance numbers are common. Movies often halt the action entirely for an item number, as a guest actress drops by. For the length of a song, the suspension of disbelief the rest of a movie requires is on pause.

Musical numbers are a place where a movie can comment on itself, and Khalnayak takes full advantage of the remove. (In an earlier number with more traditional Hollywood framing, Dixit winks at us while singing to her beloved.) Likewise, Saroj Khan’s choreography in “Choli Ke Peeche” invites us to enjoy Ganga’s sexuality without concern about racy lyrics—or even about the villain, who dances in his chair along with the rest of us. With the camera as chaperone, it’s safe for “Ganga” to asks what else she’s meant to do but lift her skirts a bit as she walks (that skirt's expensive!), and to let her prince know she sleeps with the door open. The men around her are either part of the act, or an audience safely contained by the narrative and the frame for our benefit. (At times, her back is to her audience so she can dance for the camera; Khalnayak knows we’re watching.) “Choli Ke Peeche” is a thesis statement on the relationship between performance and audience.

It’s a moment powerful enough to cast a shadow across the rest of the film. This number, not the crimes or the cops, is what the movie returns to repeatedly; it’s too good to ignore and too subversive to solve. Not least, among the other layers of performance, is queer subtext. In Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, Gayatri Gopinath points out that “female homoerotic desire between Dixit and [Neena] Gupta is routed and made intelligible through a triangulated relation to the male hero.” Champa’s masculinized within the performance; she asks the loaded title question, addresses our heroine’s male savior, and discusses him with Ganga. It’s a significant connection between women in a song supposedly directed at a man—which might be why Champa is the one who defends Ganga’s reputation by explaining the dance-hall sting, and reminding the audience it was all for show.

But that’s not going to stop “Choli Ke Peeche.” At the end of the second act, Ballu blows Ganga’s cover. (He’s known she’s a cop since their backstage meeting—another layer of performance). To prove they mean no real harm, the men don lenghas and veils and parody a chunk of the number, right down to interjectional close-ups and a wandering camera that brings kinetic energy to the static space.

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In one way this reprise tries to undercut the song’s power by making it faintly ridiculous, suggesting it isn’t really sexual—it’s camp. But if “Choli Ke Peeche” functioned as a ‘safe’ way for Ganga to express sexuality when we first saw it, it serves a parallel purpose here. Despite the mocking undertones, with this number the men are reassuring her; they understand her sexuality was itself just a performance—her purity is therefore safe with them. (We know that’s a concern here because her shawl is pulled close about her; the free-spirit act is over, and her virtue is at stake.)

But there’s also something undeniably subversive in hyper-masculine, violent figures reenacting coy expressions of feminine desire. To prevent things from getting too subversive, Ballu invades Ganga’s personal space, a reminder of his power amid the making fun. And the performance ends in the threat of violence against Ganga when she breaks the spell—the expected order of captor and captive reestablishing itself as the film falls into a formulaic last act, an attempt to wrest social order out of the exuberant chaos one musical number has wrought.

It caused some chaos offscreen, too. When the soundtrack was released ahead of the film, “Choli Ke Peeche” was deemed obscene; the song was banned on Doordarshan and All India Radio, and faced legal challenge at the Central Board of Film Certification. In “What is Behind Film Censorship? The Kahlnayak debates,” Monika Mehta writes that “the visual and verbal representation combined to produce female sexual desire. It was the articulation of this desire that was the problem—it posited that women were not only sexual objects, but also sexual subjects.” And within the number, there’s no doubt Ganga’s in control; she sends alluring glances Ballu’s way, mocks (then takes) his money, and signals he’s free to follow her if he dares. The undercover-cop framework gives these gestures the veneer of respectability, but since Ballu doesn’t know that yet, the frisson of the forbidden remains.

Letters of condemnation and support rolled in. Many claimed the song was too suggestive; an exhibitor from Paras Cinema in Rajasthan wrote in favor because “Choli Ke Peeche” was based on a folk song from the area, and “If it was vulgar then the ladies would have never liked it.” The examining committee eventually ruled in favor of letting the number remain, with some edits: one that removed the chorus entirely (which Ghai successfully appealed), and two cuts to beats considered provocative, including one of Ganga ‘pointing at her breast’ as she sings, “I can’t bear being an ascetic, so what should I do?”, unequivocally claiming sexuality without even a man as her object. No wonder it had to go.

It wasn’t the only controversy dogging the film; star Sanjay Dutt was arrested under The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act for possible connections to the 1993 Bombay bombings, which added an uncomfortable self-awareness to Ballu’s onscreen misdeeds. Yet those controversies did Khalnayak no harm at the box office, where it broke records, and the movie’s had such nostalgic power that as of 2016, Ghai was considering a sequel.

But “Choli Ke Peeche” remains the movie’s most measurable influence. In Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies, Rosie Thomas notes that after Ganga, “distinctions between heroine and vamp began to crumble, as the item number became de rigueur for female stars,” suggesting Khalnayak was a harbinger of less rigid strictures for Bollywood’s leading ladies. Another legacy of Khalnayak: more numbers feature women—with a man as the absent locus of their affections—dancing with each other instead, forming their own narrative connections and opening the opportunity for queer readings. (One of the most famous, “Dola Re Dola” from 2002’s Devdas, features Dixit again, alongside costar Aishwarya Rai.)

The pressure of so much cultural influence and metatextual weight might have turned a lesser scene into a relic, a stuttery car chase from a silent movie that starts a montage of the ways the camera has developed. It’s a testament to “Choli Ke Peeche” that it absorbs the weight of the years as gracefully as it does. If you want a watershed moment for sexual agency in Bollywood, you have it. If you want a starmaker with dancing that’s influenced choreography and direction for twenty years since, it’s happy to help. If you want a scene that dissects the idea of performance as subversive act, the offscreen vulgarity scandal only adds to your case. And if you want a musical number that reminds you what cinema can do, “Choli Ke Peeche” is as vibrant, campy, and complex as ever.

#bollywood #choli ke peeche #khalnayak #sanjay dutt #subhash ghai #masala film #all india radio #oscilloscope laboratories #musings #indian cinema #cinema of india #ganga #devdas #aishwarya rai #madhuri dixit #doordashan

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